


Loss Ficlet: Five Ways Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Break In Their New Home

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [26]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff without Plot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:19:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Jamie and Claire of the Loss universe break in their new house a few weeks before the wedding. A series of five smutty one shots.





	1. Part 1.0: Stairs

##  **Five Ways Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Break In Their New Home  
** ** _(Part 1.0: Stairs)  
_** **Loss Ficlet  
** **April 2018**

We never really set out with the explicit intention to christen each surface in our new home. It just happened that way. Within days, most of the surfaces of our home would earn a story –– a place where a quiet look or a smirk would bring about the cheek-reddening memory of some touch or kiss, some act of love.

This is how we broke in our new home and how the stairs came to meet my knees.

When I went to Jamie’s office with the half-baked idea of buying my colleague’s home, I had a detailed fantasy of our first night there.

We would finish unpacking the master bedroom and light candles. Then, in their gilded, flickering light, we would find one another. And thus would begin a tandem exploration that would spiral into years of making love in that very room.

I would undress him.  He would undress me.

And then, together, we would cast the shadows out together and stake claim to a life in our new home with the windows open. In this fantasy, the filmy curtains left by the previous owners would lift in the breeze and curl around us.

Slow and intentional, an almost worship of one another, we would come together like some sort of Nicholas Sparks novel.  Like a movie, we would finish together, grasping for another and sated at the last.

But the reality of our first time in our new home was much different.

On move-in day, we were bone-tired from hauling boxes and furniture up and down stairs.

When we made it to the bedroom, almost sick on take-out curry and beer, we accomplished nothing more than a moderately-satisfying missionary romp on a bare mattress.

He smelled like sweat –– a sick, hardworking kind of scent that made my head swim.  With the ring of perspiration on the armpits of the t-shirt I had been wearing all day and the helmet head of flat curls from under my baseball cap, I’m sure I neither smelled nor looked any better.

Afterwards, I felt the muscles in Jamie’s biceps and quadriceps twitch as he tried to hold himself up over me.

“ _I love you_ ,” I whispered as he collapsed on me, heavy and hot.

“ _We’re **home**_ ,” was his quiet, grunting response.

I sighed, pushing at him a little, mumbling that he was crushing me. He resituated his limbs and torso just enough that I could breathe beneath him.

“Was this the romantic rendezvous ye were wantin’?”

I could hear the smile in his voice and cracked one eye open before nestling close against him.  The smell of him canceled out the smell of me. It was like how when two people who have smoked a cigarette share a kiss, it is not like kissing an ashtray. It was us, only with body odor.

It was ridiculous. It was perfect.  It was us.

We laid there like that for a while with just one another’s breathing and the sweat of our move and joining drying on our skin.  

He kissed the engagement ring on my left hand and told me that he loved me again and again.

Despite the gobsmacking failure of my fantasy to come to life, it was not lackluster and was not a chore. It was a perfect first in our new home, filled with a quiet mutual devotion and the unbreakable promises of _more_ and _forever_.

What came the following day, though, blew my initial fantasy right out of the water as we quietly set about the unspoken mission of debauching our beautiful home.

The need for each other started out in an atypical way.  

John and David had stopped by with a housewarming present, dinner, and a few bottles of wine.  

We had been chatting and joking using the living room coffee table as a dining room table when I excused myself to refresh that impromptu cheese platter I had assembled.

I was digging through the refrigerator for another bunch of grapes and the half-empty jar of fig spread when Jamie’s front fitted itself perfectly over the curve of my spine.  

His breath was hot, humid, heavy in my ear before he spoke. “Are ye no’ wearin’ a bra under that sweater?”

With his hand seeking flesh beneath the drape of my off-the-shoulder sweater, his exploratory hands made my answer unnecessary. Having found what he was looking for, he hissed a long sound in my ear and caught my earlobe in his teeth.

The only fitting and possible response was a sighed, “God, Jamie.”

“I canna wait to marry ye, so I dinna need to confess the things I do to ye.” His words came out in a groan as he drew his long index fingers over the peak of each of my breasts.

Rendered near stupid by his words, his mouth, and his fingers, I only managed to mumble out his name again. He responded by finishing his cursory exploration with a quick pinch that made me squeak.

“ _Claire_ ,” he said meaningfully. He had his face arranged in a neutral, impassive expression, as though he had not just had his hands on my stomach and breasts. “We have guests, ye ken.”

_Oh God, he was teasing me_.

He barely concealed his glee when he laughed, “ _Behave_.”

“Oh, I hate you.”

He quirked one ruddy eyebrow, looking like the cat who got the canary. “Ye better get that cheese tray fixed up. I’ll open another bottle of wine.”

Every blood vessel in my face threatened to burst from the flush that bloomed in my cheeks. “You’re _impossible_.”

“Weel, have a look at yerself, Sassenach.” He quirked an eyebrow, stealing a grape from the small bunch in my hands and licking his lips. “Totally shameless wi’ yer nipples hard as cherries, standing at attention.”  

With a hollow pop, he freed the cork from our third bottle of wine. His mouth was drawn into the smuggest, most self-satisfied expression I had ever seen.

“Hard as cherries?”

“Aye.”

“That’s kind of gross, really.”

He was a little drunk and obviously enjoying himself very much. “At this moment, ye’re a right _sexually-frustrated mess_ , Claire.”

“You bloody bastard,” I muttered, palming my breasts through the sweater and craning my neck to see if we had gained an audience. We hadn’t.  When I realized my hands were doing little to remedy our problem, I slipped the gauzy scarf I had earlier discarded to our kitchen island back around my neck.

“Ye think that’s goin’ to help ye?”

“ _Bloody… bastard…_ ” I repeated, smoothing down the fabric of the scarf. “I’ll get my revenge.”

Jamie just laughed again ( _apparently his sole remaining form of engaging with me_ ) and emptied the fresh bottle of wine into the empty carafe.

“Not… funny, James.”

Though, deep inside I realized what he was doing.  

He was marking me, throwing me off kilter, playing a game.

And it was sexy as hell.

“Och, weel, if ye say so. But ye’ll have some time to wait for yer –– what’d ye call it? _revenge_? –– if we’re to finish this bottle.”

Two hours later, after John and David made for home, it was time for my reckoning.

But he beat me to it, his cheeks had picked up an acute rosiness. Mere moments after the door was shut and locked behind our guests, Jamie had my back pressed against the door, unwinding the scarf from my neck. He spoke into my throat as he pulled the neckline of my sweater down under my breasts.

“God, I canna wait another moment to have ye.”

His mouth burned a red wine-flavored trail over my jaw and neck, down my breastbone, and over my nipples as his hands fumbled with the zip on my white jeans.  

I stood a little dumbstruck, fingers curling just into his shirt over his heaving chest. He grunted a little as I kicked off my heeled booties and lost a bit of height. He readjusted his assault, breaking just long enough to pull the sweater over my head.

He paused a moment, breathing like he had just run a marathon and looking at me. “I canna believe ye’re mine… _here_ … in our _home_ … about to _marry_ me.”

The feeling was mutual, but a verbal response became impossible when he sealed his lips over mine. It was an almost disconcerting kiss, like he was reading my mind.

For some reason that defied logic, I found myself utterly convinced that he had never wanted me more.

With his hand gripping the back of my neck, he began to move backwards.

I followed his lead, my steps clumsy and awkward.

The squeaker in one of Buffalo Bill’s toys screamed under my foot as we clambered towards the stairs. I laughed at the sound; Jamie didn’t, just kicking the toy out of our path as the dog came hurdling around the corner to investigate the source of the squeak.  

I pulled away from him, my fist full of his shirt, and started up the stairs. I only made it three steps before he caught me by the waistband of my jeans, pulling me back to him.

“God dammit,” he grunted from behind me, urging me down. Unable to resist the way he was guiding me –– physically or otherwise –– I found myself on my knees a few steps up.

“Here?” I asked, a little breathless and wincing slightly as I got used to the feeling of the hardwood beneath me.

“Aye.  Here,” he confirmed.

“What about… bed?”

“ _No_ ,” he muttered, pulling my jeans and panties over my hips with a single, thorough tug. He carefully lifted each of my knees to get the jeans down my thighs and off of my legs. “S’okay?”

I was completely bared to him, head swimming.  While he had seen me in all manner of undress and offered up for the taking, something about being _kneeling_ , _bent_ , _and open_ to him was unspeakably intimate.  

My forehead fell forward and came to rest on my forearm as I felt a single, saliva-slicked digit test between my legs.

“Claire… is this okay?” he repeated, a desperate urgency saturating his words.

I breathed an answer: “Yes… yes…”

My head spun at the feeling of his unbridled power of him against me as he slid into me–– the insistence of his hips, the solid wall of his thighs, the curve of knowing hands over my hips, the gentle sinking of his fingertips into the soft flesh of my stomach.

His words warned of his own finish and pleaded for my own, all in a moan as he lost rhythm and became reckless with his movements.

“Come for me,” he whimpered, slipping his hand around the front of me and urging my back to arch just so as his fingers found me. And I came undone against his hand and at his invitation. “I’m about to…”

When he fulfilled his promise of finishing, he kissed my shoulder blades before dragging a lazy finger down the length of my spine. His lips absorbed the shudder his touch produced. His voice was hardly a mumble when he said, “Beautiful.”

“Perfect,” I responded, just as quietly.


	2. Part 2.0 (Washing Machine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie and Claire break in the washing machine. What's not to love?

##  **Five Ways Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Break In Their New Home  
** ** _(Part 2.0: Washing Machine)  
_** **Loss Ficlet  
** **April 2018**

I had vomit on my favorite trousers.

Despite my usual prowess at avoiding all manner of work-related splash back, I had lost the battle with a patient who just couldn’t get his post-anesthesia nausea under control.  

Generally, the truly revolting stuff ( _body fluids of any conceivable variety_ ) never made it home with me.  Those messes were typically reserved for the hospital-supplied scrubs that I left with the in-house laundry service.  In short, as Geillis said, scrubs were “ _someone else’s problem_.”

But these trousers.

 _They were my problem_.

They weren’t expensive, and I normally would have tossed them straight into the bin, but they were _my favorite_. (S _ave my wedding dress that was still undergoing its final alterations across town, I did not really have favorite items of clothing._ )

But these trousers.  

They made me look significantly taller.

Also, I had one very clear memory of Jamie lifting my lab coat and admiring my arse in them.

So _no_ to the rubbish pile.

 _Yes,_ to getting them _clean dammit_.

 _Thank you very much_.

Standing over the washing machine, I hummed along to some top forty hit that had been in my ear since my early morning coffee. Deep into the second verse of the song, I heard a chuckle from behind me.

“Ye ought tae make a second career of singin’ and swayin’ as ye’re doin’ laundry.”

When I had stumbled through the door after work shortly after midnight, Jamie had been sound asleep on the couch. With the thin line of drool on his chin and an unearthly noise coming from his chest, I hadn’t had the heart to wake him.

“We’d never be able to afford this house if we had to live on my singing.”

“If ye wore those wee purple pajama shorts we could afford a much finer house, Sassenach.”  

He apparently found himself quite amusing, gurgling with laughter and thumbing his lower lip as he leaned against the wall.

“How was yer day?”

“Other than the human vomitus on my favorite pants, I had a banner day. I’ll spare you the boring and fairly revolting specifics.” I turned back to the wreckage of my pants, committing to another round of stain pretreatment. “Yours?”

“Weel, got some things down ‘round the house for ye. Hung some pictures in the kitchen. Ye’ll probably hate where I put them and say they’re too high. I put some stuff away in places ye’ll no’ like and will have to move. I walked the dog and got us thoroughly lost. Thought a lot about ye as I ate a bagel.”

A green jealousy streaked down my throat at his perfectly lazy Sunday.  We had moved only a few days earlier and I had already returned to work.  Jamie had another two days off.  

“A bagel? The place with the good lox?”

“Aye.”

“Hmph.”

I could not mask the glimmer of annoyance. The shop around the corner with the good bagels and even better lox had become ours after only two visits. Though, the fact that the owner beckoned us in with Buffalo Bill on our heels when we hesitated at the entrance hadn’t hurt.  It felt almost like a betrayal that he’d ventured there without me, or at least that he hadn’t brought something back for me.

“Well, I’m sure the pictures are just fine where you put them.”

“Eh, ye canna say until ye see them.”

Quirking an eyebrow that he could not see, I continued to baby my pants.  “We’ll see. I’m surprised… in all of your labors, no laundry?”

“Aye. I didna make it ‘round to the wash, no.”

“ _Typical_ ,” I sighed with faux exasperation. “Leave it to me.”

“Och, aye. Verra typical, leaving it to _my woman_.”

I could feel the warmth of his body as he came nearer.  Knowing from his teasing tone that the look on his face would absolutely bowl me over, I did not turn.  Whenever he was within a six-foot radius I felt a crackling sensation, not just for physical affection, but for banter and the warmth that he radiated.

He was gravity itself.

I was electrified at his sigh, the settling of his feet on either side of mine, the proximity of his breath. The sum total made each hair on the backs of my arms stand at attention.

Once, in café in London, I had been absolutely convinced that Jamie’s gaze alone could undo me.

The way he looked at me from across the room marked me.  It said that we were together, that he was the only one I allowed to love me.

I sometimes wondered whether he knew the depth with which I returned his affection. He did not need to tell me that I had every ounce of his devotion and passion. I had his very life, if I were to need it. ****

I was equally primed to give everything and make every sacrifice I could for him.

 _For us_.

“I’m a big believer in traditional gender roles, ye ken.”

His hands found my hips, the familiar curve of his fingers settling just over the waistband of my shorts.  The fundamental mischaracterization of our relationship made beam down at my soiled trousers. _This man I had just so happened to land._

“I do the handy work…”

At that moment, his hands were working to create a fissure between my top and my shorts.

“And ye’re in charge of the cookin’, cleanin’, washin’. Of course, also preenin’ yerself to be presentable to my colleagues and desirable to yers truly.”

I bit into my lower lip, feebly attempting to stop my smile. Of the last ten meals we had eaten at home, he had prepared exactly all of them. As his thumbs worked lazy patterns just below my navel, I wondered about the clinical signs that precipitated death by pure contentment. ****

“Well…” I caught my breath, trying to rally and rise to his flirtation. “I’ve failed in the category of desirability. I haven’t shaved since we moved in.”

Swallowing hard, I tilted my head just enough so he could see my most dazzling smile.

In response, his mouth twitched, just a little at the corner.

“Good. I like ye a wee bit furry.”

In a move so quick I hardly had time to register it, Jamie’s teeth gently scraped side of my neck, tracing an invisible trail. An involuntary shiver coursed through me, earning a chuckle.

Attempting to regain my footing, I took a moment to catch my breath. His fingers slid over my bare forearms and up to my shoulders. Once there, his hands coursed down either side of my spine with such a feather-light touch that I worried I was hallucinating this entire encounter.  

Again, _breathless_.

Sometimes I drove him wild.  

Other times we drove each other wild.

However, itwas being made abundantly clear that, at least for the moment, I would be the only one coming apart at the seams.

Taking the pretreatment stick from my hand and dropping it to the washer, he huskily commented, “See. I can help.”

My throat was tight when I swallowed again. “I love when you pitch in with some of _‘women’s work_.’”

“I do my verra best to help out.”

“Very much app…” I sighed, his fingers slipping along the shell of my ear.  “App… app– _god **dammit** , Jamie_ –– appreciated.”

A physical _need_ to flirt with him bloomed in me, tightening in my belly as it grew and making my fingers shake.

“My help starts now, for example… the top ye’re wearin’ looks verra dirty.” He was drawling and slow –– soft and sticky, aroused. His accent was broadening, his words running together.

“This old thing?” I asked, peeking again over my shoulder and tugging gently at the hem to expose a slice of skin just above my hip.

“Aye.  That old thing.” His eyes were still half-hooded and sleepy, but nonetheless had a glint to them. I could tell that despite the cleverness of his banter, he was still fresh from his late-night Sunday nap.  Though apparently a touch intoxicated over our tangling about the laundry, he was deliberate with his words and actions.

I feigned inspection of my trousers, attempting to redirect the flow of blood from my cheeks.

“Your shirt isn’t much better.”

My skin went cool immediately when he removed his hands. After only the faintest rustle of clothing, a black ball of wadded up fabric landed squarely inside the washer. “In the wash.”

“Jamie,” I sighed a little, vision clouding. Without the barrier of his shirt, I could feel his chest absolutely radiating heat. Absent any real intention that he stop, I mumbled, “Quit. I need to get this done before they’re ruined and…”

My words failed me when his hand spanned my belly just under my top and guided me back to his hips. Nestled against him, I could tell that his thoughts were decidedly unrelated to laundry.

“Ye want me to stop?”

“ _No_.” A single word that was almost a hiss.  It was the only possible answer.

“ _Good_.” With his free hand, Jamie swept my soiled trousers into the washing machine and shut the lid. “Did ye put the detergent in?”

“Uh-huh.”

Starting the machine, he pressed me closer as his hand edged lower. When I whimpered, he whispered “ _shhh_ ” into my hair. Only the tips of his fingers dipped into the waistband of my knickers as he whispered, “Turn for me.”

My eyes fluttered closed as I thought, ‘ _Go ahead_ , tease me.’

“You… you’re…” I was busy wilting into his touch, my mind shorting out.

“I’m _what_?” he interrupted. His mocking tone made it abundantly clear that he knew _precisely_ what he was doing to me. I was entirely off balance.

“Driving me absolutely _mad_.”

“ _Turn_ ,” he repeated.

I did.  I could have been knocked over by a feather.

Glazed blue eyes, like the meeting of an indigo sky with a lagoon at twilight, traveled over my skin in a way that made me feel like I was splitting in half.

His hand rose, index finger lazily tracing the outline of my mouth and drawing my lower lip down. I moved to kiss him, rising onto the tips of my toes. Before our mouths could connect, he dropped his head back just enough to be out of reach.

“Jamie… c’mon…”

He just shook his head, leaning towards me and licking his lips like a predator was circling its prey.

“I want to finish undressin’ ye. Make love to ye. How I want. _Slow_.”

My head swam, the powerful promise of it making my mind fixate on the baring of skin, his hips between my thighs, the languid completion of being together.

“Will ye let me take ye like that? Slow?”

Giving a little nod, I watched as he carefully drew the hem of my shirt up and over my head.  I looked down at the utilitarian sports bra and white briefs I had donned before going to work that morning. I was blushing for no good reason at all.

“Boring underthings, I’m afraid.”

“Nothin’ boring about these,” he stated, voice matter of fact and thumbs traveling over the crests of my hipbones. “Watching ye bend over in them, getting ready for yer day.   _Christ_.  The thought of ye in those granny panties has been sustainin’ me all day, _mo nighean donn_.”

When I brought my hands to his neck, I could feel the flutter of his pulse.   _Accelerating, ascending and descending._

“White cotton gets to you?”

He caught my wrists and brought my palms to rest on his chest.  “Oh, aye.”

“Why do I buy the expensive lacy stuff then?”

“I dinna ken. I live for that fat arse however I can get it.”  

He kneaded said body part and I went for his mouth again, but he just clicked his tongue.  All of his sleepiness was gone now, his voice still slow and low. However, his fingers were moving with such intention that I would have been a fool to think he did not have a plan.

As if he were reminding me, he tutted, “ _Slow_.”

He had me primed to beg.  

Not just with my words, but with the arch of my hips, the hammering of my heart, the desperate scrabbling of my fingers.

“So kiss me _slowly_ , then.”

From the look in his eyes, begging was precisely what he wanted.

Gripping my hips, he gently urged me onto the washer.

His lips just barely ghosted over the swell of my breasts, the hollow of my throat, and up to my chin. There, he planted a single lazy kiss.

 _Slow_.

My breath hitched as his nose ghosted over the slopes of my shoulder, my throat. He was a bloody expert in making my heart pound, drawing goosebumps from my flesh, and sending my mind to call up every poem about love I had ever read.

“Jamie,” I whispered, feeling an ache claw at me from the inside as he moved my hair from the side of my neck. “ _Please_.”

His lips closed over my ear lobe and I could not stop myself from bowing into him.  “I want ye blind with wanting before I give in to ye. It’ll be something for ye to write in yer wee journal.”

His hands started at my knees and worked their way up and up until he was urging the white parachute-like briefs over my hips.

After a series of small noises elicited solely through the pressure of his fingers, I managed to gasp, “I don’t keep a journal… about… about our sex life.”

With a too-gentle tenderness he parted my legs before abruptly stopping, his eyes going wide.

“Oh God. Yer knees…”  

My fingers traveled over the crest of his shoulders before tangling in the finely waved baby hairs at the nape of his neck. “That’s _your_ doing.”

“Och, aye?”  He was a little skeptical, tenderly skimming over the purple flesh. A psychosomatic ache throbbed in both knees as the memory of Jamie bending me over the stairs the night before skittered through my mind.

As tartly as I could muster under the circumstances, I rallied. “For God’s sake, Jamie. What did you _expect_ when you screwed me on those bloody stairs?”

He made a low sound in his throat, a contrite sort of noise.  “I’ll say that at the time it seemed worth it, but I’m verra sorry, Sassenach.”

“I forgive you.”  I curved my fingers around the back of his head as he lowered his mouth to place the lightest of kisses on each knee. _It had been worth it_.

“Oh, thank God,” he mumbled, sounding like he knew full well that he was not truly on the ropes of actual anger or annoyance. “Does it hurt?”

“Just a little.” _The truth_ , thought it had not been anything a few ibuprofen and stretching could not mostly remedy earlier in the day.

“Does it hurt here?” His unkissed lips closed over the abstract purple smear on my right knee.

“Yes,” I breathed, tightening my fingers in his hair.

His lips strayed, warm and searching, I could not prevent myself from sighing a little. After a moment, he asked, “There?”

“That’s _not_ my knee.”

“S’not?” he chuckled, lips earnest on my inner thigh. Beneath me, the washing machine gurgled and switched cycles, sending a jolt up my spine.  His mouth moved to my other thigh. “Wha’ ‘bout this, here?”

“ _Huh uh_.”

“ _Curious_.”  He took my thighs in his hands, pulling me until I was angled just right.  “Have ye considered having this pain evaluated by a physician?”

One of his broad palms cupped my heel as he brought my left foot to balance on the edge of the washing machine.

My ability to respond, to banter fell away, and I suddenly felt woozy with need, hot _everywhere_ and greedy for touch. With an almost embarrassing amount of urgency, I twined my hands tighter into his hair and drew him closer.

Without further prelude, he guided my right leg up so it rested over his shoulder. Looking up from between my legs, eyes clear and demanding through auburn lashes, he ground out a single, infuriating syllable.

A _directive_ : “ _Slow_.”

When his mouth closed over its target, his tongue flat, it just as slow as everything else he had demanded from me.

“Oh _Jesus_ ,” I groaned. One of his hands was firm on my waist, thumb sinking into my flesh and drawing me nearer.

He had done this hundreds of times.  

He had done this the first night we spent together. His mouth had been hot and persistent then, coaxing and encouraging.

But the beautiful agony of this ( _slow_ ), was different than all of those other times. The buildup, the lazy way his tongue worked was entirely new. He took his time, humming appreciatively when I tensed, muscles going rigid.

My voice faded off as I cried his name. “Jamie…”

He was fostering an urgency in me, as though his ultimate goal was to make his name the only thing I had.

Chest heaving, I submitted to his mouth’s demand. Without him asking, I turned those two syllables into my mantra, squirming against the mounting insistence of his fingers. The click as the washer flipped to the spin cycle, a quick vibration that I felt everywhere, jolted me and made me shriek.

Jamie surfaced just long enough to press a laughing kiss to my inner thigh. “Stay still or ye’ll no’ like what happens.”

“It’s not fucking fun–” I started, unable to finish, the feeling of his mouth resuming its work. The feeling coupled with the sound of water draining making the world sound like a freight train.

I was regressing to a simple dish of cells, a baser life form. A _thing_ that had to devolve before it could evolve.

My vision burst with light behind my closed eyes.

In the grey matter between begging him to end the thorough assault he was carrying out and threatening to kill him for stopping, I shattered.

It was a crying, pulsing ending that did not stop the gentle attentions of his mouth.

When I had been reduced to a slackened mess, Jamie finished his task with a soft kiss above my pubic bone. I barely felt it, but it made me whimper nonetheless.

As he stood, my thighs fell closed and I turned onto my side as best as I could on top of a washing machine.  

My body was thrumming and melting, I was drawing in on myself in an attempt to savor the feeling while willing it to be over.

In the haze, I saw Jamie wipe his mouth with my discarded shirt before he started to kiss the tears from my collarbones and chest, neck and chin. When he finally reached my cheeks I realized he was whispering in Gaelic.  

Other than recognizing the profound tenderness with which he spoke, his words and constructions were too complicated for me to understand in my haze. But, in the moment, I wanted them more than anything else in the world.

I was still on my side, my weight resting mostly on one hip when he whispered, “Can I love ye now?”

I wanted to take him into my arms and return the favor, to make him come apart under my mouth and hands. I wanted to enthusiastically agree to sex and become an active participant in act two.

But my voice was dead, my mouth having fallen mute.

His mouth was close to my ear and I felt his lips there when I nodded feebly.

Feeling strangely leaden and pliable at the same time, I was dead weight as he carefully shifted me into whatever would suit him best.

When he slid into me, I could not help the guttural noise that came from me. Leaning forward, he captured the end of the sound between his lips, finally kissing me. His tongue took its time exploring mine before he pulled back, standing again.

After a few moments and three long, drawn out moves of his hips, he sighed, “We’re home.”

I was not sure if he meant home, joined together, or in our new home, together.

Either was just fine.

So I let my eyes close, reveling in the unhurried way we were joining.

“I love you,” I whispered after a time as he guided me into a sitting position. My voice cracked but it was sure, not tentative.

Buried in me as deep as the position would allow, he stilled, tucking a sweat-laden strand of hair behind my ear.  

While we said it to one another with some regularity, we rarely said it while making love.

The strength of the connection we had forged and the almost-imperceptible deepening of it with my words appeared to hit him like a slap across the face.

“Christ, I love ye, too,” he ground out in response, drawing me closer.

Nothing else existed.


	3. Part 3.0: Windowsill

##  **Five Ways Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Break In Their New Home  
** ** _(Part 3.0: Windowsill)  
_** **Loss Ficlet  
** **April 2018**

I had woken in the night, uncomfortably warm.

The air in our room was thick and I was sticky with sweat from being curled against Jamie under too many blankets.

Extracting myself from Jamie’s embrace and slipping out from the bedding knotted around us, I carefully tucked the blankets back around him. With a quiet grunt, he burrowed his face down, fingers curling into the space where my body had been.

Opening our bedroom window, I breathed deeply and let the cool, damp air paint my skin a pre-midnight dark. With the chill in the early spring air, I cooled almost immediately.  A touch of breeze wicked away the sweat that had pricked up under the curtain of my hair. Skin dried and chilled, I balanced myself carefully on the broad window sill, drawing my legs up and crossing them in front of me.

I cast a look over my shoulder.  Jamie was sound asleep –– nothing more than a mound of slumbering muscle, breathing heavily under layers of bedding. Resting my head against the window pane, I kept my eyes on the sliver of his face that was visible under the duvet.

We had fallen asleep early. He had been called into work before dawn and arrived home late. Making dinner side-by-side, I had felt the tension fade out of him.  In its place rose a bred-in-the-bone weariness. It was an utter exhaustion that threatened to pull him under at any moment.  

With a voice at a low grumble, he told me about his day as he sliced onions. His fingers were sluggish near the blade in a way that made me want to snatch the knife from him, lest I end up trying to do some sort of kitchen table sutures to close up an errant thumb or forefinger.

My day had been slow, boring.  A canceled surgery. A meeting with Tom Christie, the administrator in my department, that could have been an email or phone call. A lunch in my office as I caught up on the stack of medical journals on the edge of my desk.

His day had apparently been anything but slow or boring, and whatever adrenaline had powered him through died at the threshold to our home.

We ate in near silence, the dog snorting for scraps at our feet, and I had agreed when he quietly suggested “ _early turn in, Sassenach?_ ”

He had been soundless as we brushed our teeth and almost adorably sleepy with his soft mouth, peppermint drool on his chin, and slow hands.

I had wanted to make love, to lose ourselves in one another even for a fragment of our evening. Instead I had just curled against him. “I love sleepin’ wi’ ye,” he had mumbled, tucking his chin over the top of my head and dragging a handful of bedding up to trap the warm lines of our bodies together.

And I had known then that he literally meant  _he loved **sleeping**  with me_.

On the edge of sleep, he slurred, “Ye’re the  _little spoon_.”

It had taken me awhile to fall asleep, my quiet, niggling arousal making me restless and achy in my belly.  The smell and the solid line of his body againstme was not helping.

Perched by the windowsill, my hand fluttered to the neckline of my t-shirt and I absently traced the heavy swell of my breasts. In exquisite detail, I recalled the plan I had concocted for the two of us before he had shown up beaten down by his day.

“Ye wanted me tonight… earlier.  And I didna even touch ye.”

I had not realized he had woken.  

My hand fell to my lap and I turned to look at him slowly. In truth, I had been aching for him when we went to bed ( _still was_ ), but I offered him a smile.  

“You were dead tired. You were so…  _adorable––_ ”

he snorted, running a palm over his face––

“–– _yes, Jamie… adorable_ … with your dribbly toothpaste mouth and hooded eyes.”

“Verra  _adorable_ , I’m sure,” he grunted as he stretched, drawing his arms above his head and groaning. I had seen that stretch almost every morning since we had moved in together.  I felt my body pulling tight in on itself as I realized that I’d likely see that stretch thousands and thousands of times, again and again. ( _At least if fate played our cards right._ ) “I’m  _fine_  now.”

“ _Just fine_?” I asked, unable to stop myself from smiling.  

“Och, aye.”  He rose from the bed and stretched again.  The scaffolding of his body popped and crackled as he rotated at the waist and then looked at me straight. “ _Just fine_ , Sassenach.”

Fresh from sleep, he was unhurried and his feet plodded as he ambled towards me.  His approach woke the same unsatisfied, niggling  _thing_  that had been there when we went to bed.

I moved my feet as he sat opposite of me on the windowsill and then placed them in his lap. His fingers traced along my legs for a moment ( _ankles, shins, up to my knees, and back again to the arches of my feet_ )and he leaned his head against the wall.

“The breeze feels good. Ye’re such a hot sleeper.”

“Me?” I gasped in faux exasperation. “You’re the one that loads the bed with blankets and then presses against me, hot as a boiler.”

“Hmmm.” He shrugged a little, a minor concession, before he said, “Ye’re the one who went to bed ravenous with desire.  _Hot_.”

I fought the urge to draw my feet out of his grasp and stick out my tongue, but he hit the small knot in the sole of my foot that only he could ever find. In response, I melted.

Something outside the window, far in the distance, had his attention. The silhouette of his face, edged by buttery moonlight –– chin, jaw, cheekbones, nose –– made the  _wanting_  from earlier become something undeniable that needed to be satisfied.

_He was about to fall asleep on me again._

“Hey, Jamie?” I asked, tapping my big toe just above his navel when he quit rubbing and nodded his head back, eyes closed.

When he looked to me, I traced a wandering finger up the inside of my thigh and allowed my lower lip to be drawn in by my teeth.

 _I was going to put on a show_.

He apparently knew it, because his voice was a low growl when he said, “Claire… dinna start somethin’ ye’ll no’ be able to finish.”

“Oh?” I asked, batting my eyes as coquettishly as I could manage.

My t-shirt covered my hand, but the promise of what was happening beneath looked to undo him completely. Head lolling back and coming to rest on our gauzy white curtains, I let out a little sigh as I touched myself.

“I’m ready for you if you’ll have me now… I mean if you’re not too…  _sleepy_ still.”

“Are ye tryin’ to  _kill_  me?”

I chuckled a little ( _darkly, feeling lust for this person, this **man**  who was  **mine**_   _and mine alone_ ) and rose from the windowsill. Unceremoniously, the t-shirt passed over my head and fell to the floor with a quiet thump.  I did not bother with even the most utilitarian of stripteases as I pulled my underwear down. Jamie stood on shaky legs, making quick work of his boxers before settling back onto the windowsill.

“Is this going to cause you harm?” I asked, fingers creeping back between my legs. I could hear his breathing, shallow and faster. “Because it feels  _good_.”

“Oh God, I dinna ken.”

His eyes darkened almost imperceptibly in the moonlight and I took two steps towards him, carefully climbing astride him.

“Will we still be like this when we’re married?” he asked, eyes fixing on mine.  One of his hands tested the weight of my breast, thumb smoothing over the goosebumps rising from the chill coming in from the open window.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, drawing his head back a little to angle his lips to mine. I breathed right into him when I whispered, “I sure hope so.”

He let free the smallest of sounds when I used my hand to slip him inside of me and began to move, a slow, grinding pace that made me whimper involuntarily. With his mouth moving over my collarbones, he ran a hand down my naked stomach.  “Ye like bein’ in charge?” he asked, a little breathless. “Takin’ what ye want?”

I barely heard my own voice when I spoke again after a few moments. “Yes. I  _like_  to make you feel good and in the process––”

A squeak came from  _somewhere_ in my throat or chest or belly, making me fall silent. Instead, I busied my mouth by pressing it to his throat, tasting him and willing my heart to beat in time with his pulse.

His hands snaked around me and cupped me from behind, lifting me, then lowering me, drawing me impossibly closer. I pressed every inch of myself against his chest, as if through sheer closeness the fibers of each of our beings could unite just as we were joined.

“I’ll die from lovin’ ye, Claire.”

I slipped a hand between our bodies, searching for an ending. His hand covered mine. The pad of his thumb was warm and slightly callused from the work he had been doing to make the potting shed into his office. Finishing before me with a sleep-drunk, shuddering groan of exhaustion and completion, he raised up with his hands under my thighs.

Yipping a little, he hushed me before laying me out on our bed. My head lolling over the edge as his fingers went to work, his mouth warming the peak of one of my breasts.He loved me slowly, reverently until I came apart against the heel of his hand.

Afterwards, he laid over me carefully, drawing our limbs into a sweaty tangle –– like a single organism, sealed together as one skin with fused bones.

After a few minutes I was already wanting him again, the insides of my thighs still wet.

Hand splayed over the base of his neck, I recalled something that he said to me early in our relationship.  (“ _Does it ever stop?_ ”  _he had asked, a dreamy look of dopey contentment on his face_. “ _The wanting you?_ ”)

“Ye’re smiling to yerself,” Jamie said in my ear, rolling slightly until he was curled against my side. With a heavy thigh draping over my stomach, he trapped me to the mattress. “Nice, was it?”

I snuggled further back into the blankets and drew closer to him. This time I did not want the cool air to dry my dampened skin. When I craned my neck to look at him over my shoulder he gave me an appreciative, satisfied-like sound.

“Nice,” I said thoughtfully.  My tongue darted out to taste the sweat from his throat still on my lips.  “Are you being deliberately modest or are you hoping to inspire me to raptures of praise by means of classic understatement?”

At this, he moved, my body shifting away from his chest so I was on my back.  He positioned himself over me, mouth hovering just above mine. “Oh, modesty to be sure.”

When he captured my lower lip between his teeth I felt an immediate swell there.  It begged to be kissed and soothed by his mouth.

“If I’d hopes of inspiring ye to raptures, it wouldna be with my words, now, would it?”


End file.
